


Cusp

by thenewradical



Category: Magids Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewradical/pseuds/thenewradical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roddy Hyde is 23, about to become the Lady of Governance, and filled with a combination of terror and ambivalence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cusp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Temaris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temaris/gifts).



Mrs. Candace is ill.

To be fair, Mrs. Candace has been ill on-and-off for the past five years. But there is an air of finality this time, in the way she doesn’t get out of bed for days and in the hushed voices of the officials who visit her and shake Roddy’s hand on their way out.

Roddy feels heavy with sadness and fear and a strange sort of boredom that comes with preparing to take over a job she has known would be hers since she was fourteen.

It’s too many feelings at once and she’d rather not think about any of them, so Roddy keeps busy, spending her time at Mrs. Candace’s house. She reorganizes the library and finds interesting new spells to practice and generally avoids the future as best she can. It’s like being in the eye of the storm.

“You don’t need to hover, dear,” Mrs. Candace tells her one morning.

“I’m not hovering,” Roddy responds automatically. And up until that point, she thought she hadn’t. She had been avoiding Mrs. Candace’s room, except for periodic trips to bring in tea and arrange flowers.

“When was the last time you were home,” Mrs. Candace presses and Roddy can’t answer right away. She thinks of her little flat in Salisbury, overlooking a cramped street, with a view of the river (only from the back window, if all the leaves have fallen and she stands on her tiptoes). But somehow it doesn’t feel like _home_ as much as the guest room she stayed in for five years.

Roddy is regressing, and she didn’t even notice.

“I like being here,” she says finally, and honestly.

Mrs. Candace laughs weakly. “That makes one of us.” When Roddy starts to leave, she adds “Why don’t you visit your family? Have some relaxing time away from here.”

Roddy laughs it off at first. Camping with the Progress is the exact opposite of relaxing, Grandfather Hyde is worlds away on Magid business, and time has not built a warm relationship between Roddy and Heppy.

Of course, there is always Grandfather Gwyn...

Calls are placed, arrangements made, and the next afternoon, Roddy is off to Wales.

* * *

She has to invite Grundo. Roddy’s never been to visit her grandfather without him, and as much as she loves Grandfather Gwyn, the idea of visiting him by herself terrifies her. She needs Grundo there to fill the silence.

When she talks to him, Roddy asks him to bring Nick. There are all the logical reasons to invite him along –so he can meet more of her family, so he can see Blest’s Wales – but mostly she just wants to _see_ him, as though being around him will make everything better.

Of course, the moment he and Grundo arrive at her flat, Nick kisses her on the cheek, puts on his headphones, and sinks into the back seat of the car and falls asleep.

“If it weren’t for the fact that he threw up in Maxwell Hyde’s car on the way to _and_ from Toby’s graduation, I’d swear he was making up the car sickness thing to be dramatic,” Grundo tells her.

Roddy’s annoyed, to say the least, but she’s grateful for the chance to catch up with Grundo. She could use a travel spell to speed up the journey, but she so rarely gets to see Grundo now that she jumps on any chance to talk to him. He was such a huge part of her life for so many years that his move to another world leaves her feeling like she is missing a limb.

She gives him the news from Salisbury and he catches her up on the projects he is working on with Romanov – and it’s always Romanov with him, never Father – before falling silent.

“How is the Progress,” Roddy ventures. She doesn’t look at him when she asks, keeping her eyes firmly on the narrow road.

All she gets out of him is a “Fine,” and a wall of silence that dares her to ask more.

Grundo has been working as a consultant for Prince Edmund for almost two years now. He comes to Blest whenever there’s a problem that’s too small for the Merlin and too obscure for the other magic users. Roddy’s grandfather has told her that Grundo’s a lock for the next Merlin, and it might happen sooner than they think.

Roddy is sure that he’s right – Grandfather Hyde always knows these things – but she’s not sure if Grundo would be so willing to agree. He hates talking about being back with the Progress, no matter how rarely he is actually with them. Roddy can’t blame him – she would never want to rejoin that life and that’s without the baggage that comes with a treasonous mother. If he were to become the next Merlin, the Progress would be his life again.

She understands his ambivalence because she feels the same way. A part of her wants him to be the Merlin because it will make her job easier when she becomes Lady of Governance. She’ll have open lines of communication to the government through someone she knows.

But not someone she completely trusts. And that is the part of Roddy that does not want him to be the Merlin, because a selfish boy who bewitched her for years should not be trusted with that sort of power.

This is how it always is with Grundo. He is her best friend in the world but she must always sleep with one eye open when he’s around.

* * *

When the car pulls up the manse, Grandfather Gwyn is waiting for them. She’s always struck by how foreboding the manse looks and for a moment, Roddy thinks that she made the wrong decision coming. _How am_ _I supposed to relax here_ , she wonders. But the ghost of a smile her grandfather gives her when she gets out of the car reassures her.

“Thank you for having us on such short notice,” Roddy tells him.

“It is not a problem,” Grandfather Gwyn assures her. He nods at Grundo. “It is good to see you again.” And then his gaze falls on Nick.

“This is my friend Nick Mallory” Roddy says, supplying the introduction he was waiting for.

Nick looks ill in a way that has nothing to do with car sickness when he shakes her grandfather’s hand. Roddy tries to catch his eye but for some reason he won’t look at her

“Olwen has prepared your rooms,” Grandfather Gwyn tells them. “I am sure you are tired from the journey. We will eat at seven o’clock. I will see you then.”

The silence of the manse is lovely. Every time she visits, she is very aware of stepping into another world. But unlike Grundo, who spends every visit conducting experiments to crack her grandfather’s mysteries, Roddy lets herself get caught up in it.

She loves the muted, heavy feeling to magic here. She loves her room with the improbable view of the hills. She even likes how chilly it always is, although she’s not about to make a visit in January.

She’s fishing around in her bag for a sweater when there’s a knock at the door. Nick enters, still looking pale.

“It wasn’t _that_ long of a car ride,” Roddy says, “You can’t be so--”

“Your grandfather is Gwyn Ap Nud,” Nick interrupts.

Roddy stares at him. “Well yes, we discussed this years ago, remember?”

“It’s one thing for you to tell me that, it’s another to have him show me to a guest bedroom.”

 “You’ll get used to it pretty quickly,” Roddy shrugs. “It’s actually not that big of a deal.”

“Not a big deal? I’m going to have dinner with the lord of the underworld in a couple of hours!” Nick paces the room, looking a little hysterical. “Oh god, he’s probably going to kill me.”                                                                                           

Roddy sighs. “Why would he want to kill you?”

 “For- for sullying your virtue,” Nick splutters.

Roddy giggles at that. She can’t help it. Nick is usually so cool and above-it-all, and to see him flustered is a treat. “Nick, my mother ran away from here to marry someone Grandfather Gwyn didn’t approve of, and both she and my dad are still alive. You’ll be fine.”

She finds a sweater and starts to pull off the thin shirt she’s wearing and Nick makes a strangled noise and covers his eyes.

“Oh, come on,” Roddy says. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before!”

That just makes Nick go even whiter. “Don’t say that! He might hear!”  She thinks he says something like “I am _not_ going to the Underworld for you” and Roddy laughs as he sprints through the door. 

* * *

 

The thing with Nick started four years before.

Roddy is hesitant to call it dating. That term is better applied to people who live in the same universe and see each other more often that every couple of months.

(Nick would say they are dating, but Roddy feels safer keeping it ambiguous.)

Whatever it is, it started when Roddy kissed him in Romanov’s kitchen.

It was summer, and the sun was setting. The Izzies had organized an island-wide game of hide-and-go-seek. Roddy went into the house to find a new place to hide, preferably one where she could take a nap. Somehow, the Izzies were more exhausting as teens than they had been as children.

She was surprised to find Nick alone in the kitchen, putting water on to boil. He and Toby had been attached at the hip all day – Toby still thought Nick was the coolest person in the world, and Nick hadn’t matured quite enough to say no to some hero worship.

“Done with hiding?”

“I thought I should make dinner,” Nick said with a shrug. Roddy leaned up against the counter and watched while he started to chop vegetables for spaghetti sauce.

Something clicked. There had always been so many reasons not to start something with Nick: his horrible flirting, her own wariness. And the timing was never right. But all that disappeared. They were alone in a kitchen on an island made of multiple worlds and Nick was making them dinner and Roddy was finally ready. Before she really knew what she was doing, she kissed him.

When he got over his shock, Nick kissed her back.

They have been together ever since, albeit in a very disjointed way. Usually she sees him at Romanov’s island, sometimes in Salisbury, and one time in Nick’s London.

Mrs. Candace loves when he visits. She laughs and brightens in a way that Roddy can never make happen. She supposes that Mrs. Candace is thinking of when she was young, when her husband was still alive.

Nick’s mentioned getting married, in an extremely roundabout and abstract way. It doesn’t surprise her, because Nick is the more romantic half of their relationship. But Roddy knows it won’t work and that he’s never outright asked means he knows too. Roddy can’t leave Blest, and Nick would never stay in one place. If he did, it would be with his father.

But Roddy loves him despite all that. He frustrates her to no end, and she thinks he’s reckless. But he makes her smile, and laugh, and when she has a magical problem she can’t solve, she knows he will help her fix it, and she does the same for him. Their minds work well together.

Roddy feels happy with Nick, but she also feels powerful.

All that is why it is almost physically painful for her to watch Nick desperately try to impress her grandfather. He’s still a bit clueless when it comes to Blest history, so he can’t properly be a part of Grandfather Gwyn’s conversations with Grundo. And when he tries to talk about something he does know, it comes out as boasting and Grandfather Gwyn doesn’t say anything, just stares until Nick gets quiet.

 “You just have to be yourself,” Roddy tells him after dinner. “He hates when people try to be bigger than they are. But if you’re just Nick, he’ll like you.”

She realizes this is horrible advice even before Nick glares at her. She sighs, and adds “It might not have been fair to bring Grundo. They do get on scarily well.”

“That makes me question your grandfather’s judgment,” Nick mutters before he stomps away to his room.

Nick hasn’t completely forgotten about the glamour either.

* * *

Roddy always has the strangest dreams when she is in Wales.

That first night, Roddy is standing outside the manse. It’s dark with a lovely full moon, and she can hear something in the woods just beyond the drive. She starts towards the noise, in that way that seems ill-advised in real life but perfectly logical in a dream.

It doesn’t take her long to find the source of the noise. In a small clearing, there is a woman hacking at the bark of a tree. The movement is determined and angry, but she is not lost in a frenzy, because she stops and turns when Roddy steps on a branch, the crack echoing over the sound of the woman’s knife.

Her hair is long and dark, like Roddy’s, but her face is so pale it’s as though Roddy can see through her. She wears nothing on her feet and the pockets of her dress are overflowing with plants that Roddy recognizes as ingredients for a spell.

Despite knowing deep down that she is dreaming, Roddy is scared of the woman. It’s not that she looks wild, Roddy thinks, so much as she looks _severe_.

“Hello,” Roddy says cautiously, but the woman just glares at her and goes back to scraping bark off the tree. “What are those for?” But as she gets closer, she can make out the plants on her own.

_Juniper. Spiked wood-rush. False fox-sedge._

Those would make a powerful tynged.

The woman answers without looking at Roddy. “For women’s work. The only kind that matters.”

“Who are you?” Roddy asks, trying to stay calm.

The woman turns again to face her. “You should know me, girl,” the woman growls. “You should know me as well as you know yourself.”

Oh. Roddy had always wondered why her parents had named her Arianrhod, given that it wasn’t the most uplifting mythological name they could have chosen. “It’s a family name,” they always said. She’d never really thought that they meant it literally.

Arianrhod is looking at Roddy approvingly. “You’ve been given an ancient power,” she says. “And it’s integrated well with what was already there. That’s good. You’ll need both for the job you are to take.”

“To be Lady of Governance?” Roddy had been told that her power would lie in her ability to negotiate and be diplomatic. “I think my time at Court will be more useful.”

Arianrhod scoffs and makes a small gesture with her hand. Suddenly the forest disappears and it’s as though they’re standing on top of a map of the Isles of Blest, with the lights of cities twinkling below them. “You will control the balance of this place, even here in Wales.”

Roddy starts to explain that the balance she referred to is a metaphor for the magical and political situation of the country, but she has a feeling that Arianrhod does not deal in metaphors. So she focuses on the truth behind it. Balance reminds her of Stonehenge, of the dragon, and changes.

“The balance of Blest was put right,” Roddy tells her. “We fixed it.”

“Blest is not something that can be fixed,” Arianrhod intones. “It is a living, changing thing, and you will treat it as such.”

Roddy looks down at the land below them. It’s the people that make Blest alive, and all the plants and animals. But she fixes her gaze on Salisbury and when she concentrates, she can _almost_ feel something beneath the land, moving.

There is a rushing feeling under Roddy’s feet and once again they are back on earth, in front of the manse.

Arianrhod looks up at the house. “How much do you trust these men?”

Roddy does not answer right away. She trusts Nick with her life but doesn’t know where they will be in six months. She will always be wary of Grundo. And her grandfather is a mystery, but a reliable and honest one. “Enough,” she says finally.

That makes Arianrhod smile, the first smile she has given Roddy that is not tinged by malice. But it is replaced quickly by a hard stare. “You are smart, but you have been raised in a position of weakness. And you are surrounded by those whose motives do not take yours into account.”

Arianrhod pulls herself up to a towering height and Roddy shivers in spite of herself. “You have a power,” she says gravely. “I suggest you use it.”

It takes Roddy a very long time to fall back asleep after she wakes up.

* * *

When Roddy gets up that morning, she is filled with a bitterness that will not go away. It does not take her long to realize how best to fix it.

She and the boys set out for the Hurt Woman’s village.

Roddy didn’t actually tell them that’s where they were going; she just appeared at the door to the dining room where they were eating breakfast and announced “We are going on a hike.” She wasn’t trying to be mysterious; even after walking for half an hour, Roddy still isn’t sure she could put into words why she needs to go to the village.

Roddy wishes she could say that she knew how to find the village on instinct, but she had her grandfather draw a map for her again. When Grundo sees her pull it out of her pack, he shoots her a worried look, which she refuses to respond to with anything but a smile. Grundo sighs and she can hear him grumble something about being glad that Olwen packed them sandwiches.

(They pass a hill covered in grass and if Roddy were sweetly sentimental instead of morbidly so, she would stop to tell Nick that was where she saw him for the first time.)

By the time they reach the village, Nick is muttering that an epic hike is not a relaxing vacation and Grundo keeps looking at her like she’s about to collapse like she did the last time. Roddy’s a bit worried about that as well; what if the Hurt Woman left something else for her and she’ll have to go through all that again?

But butterflies do not come up to meet her. The most she gets as a greeting when they see the ruins of the village is Nick grumping “Well, this looks charming.” Roddy glares at him and sets of on her own. Grundo must fill in Nick when they follow, because by the time they catch up, Nick looks appropriately reverent.

When Roddy stops in front of the smallest ruin at the end of the village, the Hurt Woman does not appear before her. She does not download an encyclopedia’s worth of ancient magic. But she feels an ache in her hip all the same. Roddy can see that ruin as it was before, with everything kept low so the Hurt Woman could reach it. She couldn’t walk out the front door, much less go to Salisbury or London. She never walked the Dark Paths and saw other worlds.

“She was so powerful,” Roddy says, quietly. “She knew so much and she could have changed the world. But they hurt her.” Her voice gets louder as she talks, and suddenly she is angry. Not in the way that Arianrhod was, but angry on behalf of this woman who was so alone. “The people in this village were scared of her and they hated that she might go away, so they crippled her.”

Roddy turns around to face the boys. “That’s never going to happen to me.”

She doesn’t know if it’s a warning to them, or the Government, or all of Blest. But instead of saying that they would never let that happen, or that they would protect her, Nick and Grundo just nod. They will not try to run Roddy’s life for her, not anymore. But they will back her up.

She had told Arianrhod the right thing. She trusts them enough.

* * *

It rains and rains the following day, which Roddy takes as a suggestion to sleep in. When she finally ambles downstairs, one look at the still-rumpled Nick and Grundo tells her that they made a similar choice.  They eat a late breakfast drink copious amounts of the spicy hot chocolate Olwen gives them. Later, Grundo disappears to do some spells (“I still don’t understand the discrepancies in time when we come here,” he grumbles) and Roddy and Nick find a couch to camp out on and read. Nick gave her one of his father’s books earlier, and she rather likes it.

Roddy supposes that this was what she came to Wales for, to relax and do nothing. But growing up in the Progress means she has never done well with sitting still, and it is almost a relief when Grandfather Gwyn calls her into his study.

It’s the first time she’s been in the study. It’s almost a letdown; it’s just some bookshelves and a desk. The most interesting thing is the stained glass window on one wall. Her grandfather gestures for her to sit in the chair opposite the desk and it feels like a formal meeting.

“You are to be the Lady of Governance.” Yes, formal meeting it is, then.

“I suppose,” Roddy answers, and it comes out more sullen than she intended and Grandfather Gwyn looks at her stonily.

“You do not want the position?”

Even though she has still yet to see him in front of a congregation, Roddy understands why he makes a good priest: his expression makes her want nothing more than to confess her sins. “I don’t know,” she admits. “The whole thing still feels like a mystery to me.”

“You have been trained to take on the position.”

“Yes, but it was all so _theoretical_ ,” Roddy says, her frustration starting to boil. “It wasn’t anything like real life, and the real life I did see always seemed so boring. It’s all diplomacy, just like being with the Progress. And if it’s not that, it’s settling fights among squabbling hereditary witches. I don’t think that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

“You could refuse it,” Grandfather Gwyn tells her.

“Oh, but I couldn’t,” Roddy bursts out. “It’s an important position, and being the heir presumptive is an honor. There are lots of people counting on me to take this job, and I can’t let them down. And Mrs. Candace already has so much else to worry about, I can’t burden her with my problems. And why should I have problems? I have a future that’s provided for and a plan, which is more than most people have. If I gave this up, I don’t know what else I would do with my life.” She pauses her tirade, and by the time she catches her breath, the words come out quiet, crushed. “I don’t really know what to do at all.”

Grandfather Gwyn sat in silence during her waterfall of speech. When he speaks, his voice is solemn. “The Lady of Governance is an ancient position. Many women have held the title. Some were gentle counselors. Some were builders. A few held the ear of the king and ruled all of Blest. One led men into war. And some have lived very much like your Mrs. Candace, and many others very differently.” He looks at her, as though sizing her up. “What type would you be?”

Roddy feels defeated when she says “I told you. I don’t know.”

He sighs and Roddy realizes that he may know what she’s going through. “I believe that the only way to know, Arianrhod, is by doing.”

* * *

When she goes to bed, Roddy dreams that she is walking in the hills outside the manse. It’s cloudy out, but enough moonlight gets through that she can see a group of women by the edge of a lake.

One of them calls “Hello there!” Roddy’s not sure if she’s talking to her, but the woman continues “Yes, you! Why don’t you come down here? We could use the company.”

The other women join in, saying that yes, Roddy should come and stay awhile, and Roddy makes her way down to the shore.

The three women are all old, and all dressed in green. “Just doing some laundry,” the tallest one says, in a Welsh accent so heavy Roddy struggles to understand her. That one is beating the clothing against a washboard . The second one, who called out to Roddy, is rinsing the clothes in the lake. The oldest and smallest of the three is wringing out the garments and draping them on a stone to dry.

“You have a very efficient system,” Roddy compliments them. “But why not do it during the day?”

The second one scoffs. “There’s no better time to do laundry than at midnight.” She doesn’t offer a further explanation, so Roddy just nods in agreement.

“It’s an awful lot of laundry,” Roddy says. There are several overflowing baskets, and the rocks are covered with drying clothes. “Is it for all of your families?”

“It’s for everyone,” the third one snaps. The other two glare at her, and the tall one jumps in to ask “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Oh, no, I’m from Salisbury.”

“Lovely city,” the second one says.  She starts to go on about how pretty the cathedral is, but Roddy starts to really look and take in the scene. Three women, washing clothes by a lake at midnight.

“Are you the Washerwomen?” Roddy interrupts to ask.

“Took you long enough,” the third woman grumbles.

“I didn’t realize anyone knew us outside of Wales,” the first woman says.

“My mam told me about you when I was a child,” Roddy says. She remembers her mother reading aloud to her from a book of Welsh folktales before bed. It should have been scary, but Roddy always liked the story about the Washerwomen, who would clean the shrouds of those about to die. There’s something very neat and orderly about it that appealed to Roddy even then.

“Isn’t that nice to hear,” the second one says happily. “We’re just as much a part of Blest as anyone else. I think it’s important to keep the old stories alive, and I’m not just saying that because I am one, you know. I think knowing one’s heritage is the key to being a successful member of society.” She pulls a garment out of the water and Roddy’s heart stops.

It’s Mrs. Candace’s favorite sweater.

Roddy turns and runs for the manse, ignoring the cries of the Washerwomen (and she swears she can hear the oldest one cackle). She runs until she is awake and back in her bed.

Roddy slips out of her room and down the hall. She goes into Nick and Grundo’s room, and shakes Nick awake. The panic on her face must show, because he suddenly seems much more alert than he usually does after waking.

“We need to go home,” she tells him. “It’s time.”

* * *

Grandfather Gwyn is up and waiting for them in the hall when they leave. He embraces Roddy but does not offer comfort or reassurance. His talk with her yesterday was all he needed to say. But he bows his head towards her as the car pulls away, and it feels like a blessing.

Grundo drives her car and Nick sits in the back seat with her. “Try to get some sleep,” he murmurs. He’s holding her close against his side and somewhere in the haze of her grief Roddy can feel how much she loves him. And it scares her because suddenly she has no idea if the Lady of Governance can be in a relationship with a free agent who wanders from world to world. But she thinks of the Hurt Woman, who wanted to marry the man in the next village, and her mam running away from home to marry her dad. 

Roddy is not in the right frame of mind to make major life decisions, but she decides in that moment that only person who will break up she and Nick will be the two of them. She squeezes his hand, sealing the promise with herself. And even though Nick doesn’t know what she’s thinking, he kisses the side of her head as though in agreement.

Grundo must have used a spell to speed up the travel, because it is still pitch black out when they arrive at the house. There are a pile of cars out front, and any hope that Roddy had that she misinterpreted her dream is gone.

“Do you want us to come with you?” Grundo offers.

“No,” Roddy tells them. “But stay in town, okay?” She gives them the key to her flat, kisses Nick, hugs Grundo, and doesn’t look back as she walks to the house.

Inside, it is filled with men talking in hushed voices. They look toward the door when it opens and all rise deferentially when Roddy enters. It’s all government people, some familiar to Roddy and others total mysteries. She searches the room for a friendly face and almost cries with relief when she sees Salisbury in a dark corner.

“She knew you were on your way,” he says quietly, guiding her towards the stairs. “She’s waiting for you.”

Roddy goes slowly up the stairs, memorizing every nook and cranny, reminding herself that this is the last time it will be Mrs. Candace’s house. She knocks when she reaches the door to the bedroom, and a soft voice calls her inside.

She looks almost the same as when Roddy left, just a little more tired. Mrs. Candace smiles when she comes in and gestures for her to sit in the chair next to the bed.  “I’m sorry to have ruined your vacation,” she says.

“Nick spent most of the time being terrified by my grandfather, so it was ruined already,” Roddy tells her.

This makes Mrs. Candace laugh weakly. “I can see how he would be terrifying to any young man. I’m tempted to call him here to scare off that group downstairs.” Her face turns serious. “Now Roddy, you must know that the second I’m gone-”

“Oh! But-”

“I don’t have much time left,” Mrs. Candace says sternly, “so let’s not postpone the inevitable. We must discuss arrangements.” Roddy nods and blinks away tears. Hearing Mrs. Candace talk so matter-of-factly about her death means there is no turning back.

“As I was saying, as soon as I’ve passed, those men downstairs will turn into a swarm of bees and start jabbering at you about the funeral and organizing your swearing-in ceremony. Don’t listen to a word they have to say and do it all on your own terms. But if you do need any help, Ann Jones, the woman down there in the white coat, is an old friend. She’ll make a good adviser. Or call Maxwell Hyde. He seems like the organized sort.”

There’s so much Roddy wants to ask her, big and trivial. What will she do every day? How does she know who to trust in the government? What should she wear to the swearing-in ceremony? She just can’t make her mouth open. Mrs. Candace closes her eyes, but she keeps speaking. “I’m so proud of all you’ve done, Roddy.”

“I can’t do it,” Roddy bursts out. “I’m not ready! I still have so much to learn!”

“Oh, my darling,” Mrs. Candace says, taking hold of Roddy’s hand. “So do I.”

* * *

The funeral takes place three days later in the Cathedral. The guest list is massive, and it makes Roddy feel that she has made the right decision by having a small swearing-in ceremony.

Ann is handling all the details, giving Roddy the occasional update and making sure she has all the essential information. Mrs. Candace was right; Ann will be a good adviser.

The King attends the funeral, and shakes her hand while offering his condolences. Prince Edmund does the same and adds that he looks forward to seeing her at the swearing-in ceremony. He lingers after his father leaves and says “I know your predecessor tended to work on her own, but I want to do things differently when I’m king. We were both at the Henge that day. Maintaining the balance of magic in this country will be my number one priority. I hope you will work closely with the government.”

Roddy’s a little shocked that she’s just been politically propositioned at a funeral, but she smiles enigmatically and says she will consider it. And she will.

To her surprise, Roddy spies Romanov sitting near the back, looking impossibly dapper in a dark suit. Roddy is not sure what to make of him. She doubts that he would offer her official help, and if he did, she is not sure she would take it. She can't fully trust Romanov, in the same way that she cannot trust Grundo; they both have a tendency to take the easy way out. But it’s still nice to see him there and to know that he cares enough to attend.

She spends most of the ceremony by her parents, who can’t stop telling her how proud they are of her. It’s the sort of comfort she needs on a day like this. Nick is there too; he’s promised to take her to his London the next day, just for the weekend. “So you can enjoy some time without magic before it becomes your whole life,” he tells her.

The bells of the cathedral ring when the funeral ends, and a whole life of magic seems like a promise. 

* * *

Roddy drives herself out to the Henge.

Magic is so much stronger here, Roddy thinks. She weaves in and out of the stones, a looming reminder of just how old this magic is. She is the one to take care of it now, and it no longer seems like a scary proposition. Or rather, it is scary, but underneath the fear it feels right.

The flower files open in her head, showing her just how many spells there are in the world, and all the things she could do with them. She has her whole life ahead of her to define what sort of Lady of Governance she will be. She can spend the next few years trying on all the different roles, and find the ones that suit her best.

Roddy lies down in the high grass. Invisible folk float above her in the air, and below the earth hums with the movements of the Little People. Whatever she decides to be, she promises herself, protecting this will be most important.

Roddy breathes in, and Blest breathes out with her.


End file.
